Patriots Journal: Vereen provides spark in surprise start

When the Patriots offense took the field for the first time on Sunday, there was a surprising starter at running back: Shane Vereen.

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By
TIM BRITTON
Posted Oct. 22, 2012 @ 8:12 pm

FOXBORO — When the Patriots offense took the field for the first time on Sunday, there was a surprising starter at running back: Shane Vereen.

Vereen entered Sunday with all of two carries this season; he had been inactive in half of the first six games.

But it was Vereen who got the start against the Jets, and it was Vereen who was the recipient of Tom Brady’s first pass and his first two handoffs.

Vereen had eight carries for a robust 49 yards and the one catch for 10 yards.

“We kind of had a rotation based on the grouping that was on the field and it just so happened we started the game with that grouping and Shane was in there,” offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels said. “Any one of our backs could start the game. We have confidence in all of them.

“Shane is one of those guys and did some productive things for us yesterday.”

It was an important game for Vereen, who entered training camp in competition for carries with Stevan Ridley. Not only did he lose the battle with Ridley, but he fell behind Brandon Bolden on the depth chart as well, putting his long-term roster spot in jeopardy.

Performances like Sunday’s could keep him around.

“Shane is a good athlete. Shane has worked hard, he’s a smart kid and he had more opportunities yesterday than he’s had since the preseason,” coach Bill Belichick said. “Like everybody who played yesterday, there were some good things to build on and there were some things they could have done better. We’ll just keep going forward and try to work on some things and build on some of the positive things.”

Play results in walk-off win

For all that it did wrong in the fourth quarter on Sunday, the Patriots defense came through with a big play when it needed one the most. Give the credit to Jermaine Cunningham and Rob Ninkovich.

With the Jets attempting to answer New England’s opening field goal in overtime, Cunningham and Ninkovich teamed up for a sack, a forced fumble and fumble recovery to ice the game — a trifecta never before seen in walk-off fashion.

Cunningham got the initial pressure on Mark Sanchez, grabbing the quarterback’s lower leg. That left him vulnerable to Ninkovich, who, while he came in to finish the sack, knocked the ball out of Sanchez’s hands. Ninkovich pounced on the loose ball to end the game.

Belichick was effusive in his praise of his two defenders Monday.

“It’s not just sacking the quarterback, but as you go to tackle him you have an awareness of where the ball is. As a quarterback, when you grip the ball, you don’t really have it secured like a running back does,” Belichick said. “Rob has done that on numerous occasions, including last year as well. He has a good feel for that. It’s just an instinctive play that we coach and we talk about, but every play like that is different. It’s really the player’s awareness — in this case Rob’s awareness — that made it a game-changing play.”

Defensive coordinator Matt Patricia said the play was a total team effort.

“It’s everybody on the field really doing their job — making sure the coverage matches what we’re doing up front, giving those guys up front an opportunity to get to the quarterback and making sure we cover those guys well enough to allow that to happen,” he said. “Everybody up in the front handling their business is really what allowed us to be able to get there.”

“I think Sanchez really wasn’t able to avoid that hit and just didn’t have quite enough time to get the ball tucked way before Rob hit him,” Belichick added. “It was a good play by both players.”

Reunion for McDaniels

No, it won’t generate the same kind of buzz as when McDaniels faced off with the Patriots as the head coach in Denver back in 2009. But McDaniels is going up against a former organization on Sunday, when New England takes on the Rams in London.

McDaniels served as Steve Spagnuolo’s offensive coordinator in St. Louis a season ago before jumping at the opportunity to come back to the Pats when Spagnuolo was fired. It was a tough 2011 for the Rams, who took a step back from a surprising 2010. St. Louis went 2-14 and scored just 193 points — 94 fewer than any other team in the NFC.

So what did McDaniels learn during his time there?

“I think it was a learning experience to see how other people view trying to run their organization and do it successfully,” he said Monday. “Coach Spagnuolo, Billy Devaney and Kevin Demoff — they had a certain way to do things, and it was different than what I had experienced before. Whether it was the way they ran practice, how they carried out their walk-through, the structure of their day during the course of the season, how we did the draft, what we did in terms of our preparation for the offseason, although we had the lockout last year — just so many different ways to approach it and to try to be successful and certainly the people that I worked for last year — they have had a history of being successful in a number of different organizations and I have a great deal of respect for the way they worked.”

And as for what he knows about the Rams roster?

“This defense is going to present a lot of different challenges than we’ve faced in certain weeks here, a little bit of a different style,” McDaniels said. “Coach [Jeff] Fisher is a great coach. I obviously didn’t have the chance to coach with him there, but I’ve coached against him before. He does a great job with his team, his defense is aggressive. There are a lot of players on the defense that I’m familiar with, and we expect it to be a great challenge there in London.”

Return trip to London

When it comes to playing games in London, the Patriots have been there and done that.

New England’s Sunday contest with the Rams at Wembley Stadium will be the second time the Pats have played in the NFL’s international series. New England beat Tampa Bay, 35-7, in London in 2009.

“Organizationally, it probably helps to have been through that. We have an awful lot of players on our team that are with us now that weren’t on that trip,” Belichick said. “Individually, I think there isn’t a great deal of experience for that. Organizationally, some of the things we know we have to plan for [that] we dealt with the last time, we can learn from and maybe improve on. But each year is different, each trip is different, each team is different. I think the needs of this team are a little different than the needs of the ’09 team when we went out there.

“There’s nothing really we can do about that. We’ll take them all as they come, like all the rest of the teams do in this league. We’ll try to do the best we can with each opportunity, but we really can’t worry about it because in the end, it’s eight [home games] and eight [road games]. When they come, it’s just the schedule. It’s out of our control.”

The Patriots are scheduled to fly to London on Thursday.

As was the case in 2009, the Pats will have a bye week after the game in London to regroup before hosting the Bills on Nov. 11.